Our being values never conflict with another person’s. If they do, someone’s hitched their values to the wrong wagon.
There are essentially two value systems governing all of us. Being values is one of them, and appearance values is the other. Let’s look at the ramifications of each.
Most of us are operating on the level of appearance value most of the time. It takes some serious investment in personal work before we start functioning for the sake of what is, and not for the sake of what it looks like in the eyes of others.
Appearance values aim at creating an impression. In their most crass form, these values are about craving approval and selling out our truth to impress someone else. We want to be on that pedestal. We may be bold in going about this, or subtle and covert. There’s just always a subtext in the background: What will they think of me?…
Operating on this being level changes things quite drastically. There are byproducts that cascade from the integrity of our deeper motives. It looks like this. When we feel attacked by judgment or criticism, if we’re operating from appearance values, we’ll be devastated. How could we not? If we’ve attached our self-worth to what others’ think of us, we must be annihilated whenever they see us in a bad light—even over something tiny. We lose our inner ground. And we lose our center because we aren’t centered in ourselves.
We lose sight of this when we are living in appearance values—until someone criticizes us. Sure, we seem centered as long as we’re being praised and admired. How gratifying, in that moment. But even in such moments of seeming success, there is an anxiety eating away at us. What we’re worrying about is how to shore up our uncentered state in which we get our self-value from outside ourselves. Problem is, in this case, we have zero control over our sense of self-value.
Living from a center of being values, conversely, brings deep inner security. That doesn’t mean peoples’ put-downs, judgments or unfair treatment don’t sting. But it won’t rattle our foundation. We experience the truth of our core. When operating from appearance values, our foundation shakes and even crumbles if someone looks sideways at us.
Jill Loree grew up in northern Wisconsin with parents who embraced their Norwegian, Swedish and German heritage. Foods like lutefisk, lefse and krumkaka were prepared every Christmas. And of course there was plenty of beer, bratwurst and cheese all year round.
She would go on to throw pizzas and bartend while attending college at the University of Wisconsin, and then moved into a career in technical sales and marketing. She would settle in Atlanta in 1989 and discover that the sweet spot of her career would be in marketing communications. A true Gemini, she has a degree in chemistry and a flair for writing.
One of Jill’s greatest passions in life has been her spiritual path. Raised in the Lutheran faith, she became a more deeply spiritual person in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) starting in 1989. In 1997, she was introduced to the wisdom of the Pathwork Guide, which she describes as “having walked through the doorway of a fourth step and found the whole library.”
In 2007, she completed four years of training to become a Pathwork Helper, and stepped fully into her Helpership in 2011. In addition to offering individual and group sessions, she has been a teacher in the Transformation Program offered by Mid-Atlantic Pathwork. She also led marketing activities for Sevenoaks Retreat Center in Madison, Virginia and served on their Board of Trustees.
In 2012, Jill completed four years of kabbalah training and became certified for hands-on healing using the energies embodied in the tree of life. She began dedicating her life to writing and teaching about personal self-development in 2014.
Today, Jill is the proud mom of two adult children, Charlie and Jackson, and is delighted to be married to Scott Wisler. She’s had more than one last name along the way and now happily uses her middle name as her last. It’s pronounced loh-REE. In 2022, Scott joined her full time in their mission to spread the teachings of the Pathwork Guide far and wide.
